My paternal grandparent immigrated to Brooklyn, NY from Angri & Sant' Egidio del Monte Albino in 1900/1901. I have been researching my Italian genealogy off & on for several years. A few weeks ago, my cousin & I were able to travel to Angri & S Egidio & meet the family of our grandmother"s sister. What a blessing! We went to the town hall found birth, marriage certificates,phone numbers, etc. Our relatives came down to the city hall & took us to their home to meet the rest of the family & cook for us! ( We had a guide/translator with us who ate, drank wine & celebrated with us! We do not speak a word of Italian, nor they, English so we could not have done this without him!!) After dinner,they took us to the cemetery where our ancesters were buried & we were able to place flowers on their graves. We also visited the church were my grandparents were married. Everyone was so gracious & loving.

I am so happy to share this experience with someone who shares my love of our Italian Ancestry. My children are not particularly interested & do not share my enthusiasm: they are busy raising their own families. I was not interested when I was their age either. It is just since I am retired that my interest has sparked.

I would like to write a letter to my "cousins" & thank them for their hospitality,etc. Is there anyone who could translate a letter to Italian for me? Please let me know how to go about this. Any help is greatly appreciated. Thank you for this forum.

Julia - I am the (as I put it) 'crazy American wife' of a fantastic Italian husband! I started working on his family tree because I wanted our sons to know something about their relatives (who all live overseas). For the first eight years everyone thought I was crazy trying to do this. Then I also started to write little stories - anecdotes about everyone I had met over the years - I used Word and loaded it with photos. Then I also printed out the family group pages and added photos - I finally ended up using an online program on Ancestry to do that but printed it myself rather than having them printed. Suddenly these younger family members were very interested! They are all in their twenties with families and now they want to connect - I never paid attention when I was younger to my own family -- I did not appreciate what I had. Preserve it all for them - they will care later! And as a side note - the overseas half are all involved now too - they loved the book!

Thank you all for your responses to my first post. I am planning to do some kind of a book with photos, family trees, & a lot of stories passed down through the years from my grandparents & my father. Some of the stories are very heartwarming. Yes, I want to preserve all of this for my children.

Here is the letter I would like translated:

Dear Antonio and Family,

It was wonderful to meet and visit all of you on my recent trip to Italy. It has long been a dream of mine to visit the home of my beloved grandparents' birth, and meet my family there. I will always treasure the time we spent together.
I am sending you some photos I hope you will enjoy.
I am hoping we can keep in touch despite the landuage barrier. We can always have our letters translated. Maria Teresa can help!. Maybe I'll even learn Italian!
Thank you so much for your hospitality and love. I love all of you, and will keep you in my heart. Kiss those beautiful grandchildren for me.

Hi Julia,
I am thrilled that you found your family and got to visit them in Italy. How wonderful! I have recently found my Italian relatives and in the near future will be visiting them in Italy. I don't speak Italian and they don't speak English . Without this forum I don't know what I would have done. Everyone here has been so helpful in translating all my e-mail and letters. I thank everyone who has taken the time to help all of us who are trying to find links to our family and our history.

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